Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

hunter as she was.
    She focused on the rail Dax gripped as he looked out over the city. She couldn’t imagine
     what it must be like for him seeing the modern world, but he handled everything calmly,
     stoically, which gave her insight to his personality. The pressure from his fingers
     denting the wood told her much more about him.
    “I saw the darkness in Mitro from the very beginning. He was from a powerful family
     and took great advantage, always a bully,” Dax continued.
    His voice was very soft, but she almost felt each word, brushing at the inside of
     her mind with a paintbrush of pure shame and sorrow. He didn’t hear it—or know—but
     she felt that raw emotion tearing through his soul. The Old One felt it just as deeply
     as she did, because unlike Dax, they were both in tune with their emotions.
    He had spoken to her about Mitro several times, just small snippets, but she’d seen
     the vampire’s depravity and his need for cruelty even as a young boy. Sometimes monsters
     were born, not made, and she feared Mitro was the former.
    “I tried to tell the elders. I even went to the prince, but I was young and they discounted
     what I said. As I was proved right more and more and the others avoided me, I learned
     hard lessons about accusing someone before knowing for certain if they actually would
     make the choice to turn. Instead of telling others when I saw that darkness in some
     of our males, I studied each of those with the shadow in them, their ways and habits.
     I followed them and often, when they made that forbidden choice, destroyed them.”
    Riley closed her eyes briefly. The sight of his hands gripping the rail until his
     knuckles were white saddened her.
    “I had to let them kill someone while turning. It was the only way to assure I wasn’t
     committing murder.” He turned to look at her, sorrow weighing him down. “Do you know
     how many people I could have saved if I’d just destroyed them before they could make
     a kill?”
    She fought the urge to rise and go to him, to put her arms around him to comfort him.
     He needed to tell someone. The weight on his shoulders—and he’d carried it for centuries—needed
     to be shared.
    “You’re right, though, Dax, it would have been murder,” she advised gently.
    He was silent for so long she nearly prodded him, but the dragon held her silent,
     stirring just enough to make her aware he was waiting, too—and he had the patience
     she needed. Dax wasn’t used to sharing, certainly not whatever fear he held so deep
     that even he couldn’t really recognize it.
    Dax let out his breath slowly and nodded, but he didn’t seem too sure.
    She clamped her mouth closed, pressing her lips together tightly. She wrapped her
     arms tighter around her knees as a surrogate for him. She needed to hold him, to comfort
     him in the way he offered her comfort and support.
    “Mitro seemed . . . much more foul . . . than any other. There’s a nobility to most
     Carpathians and I respected them, but not Mitro. I watched him closely, and he enjoyed
     the pain of others, animals, humans and Carpathians. He was cunning and vain and unfortunately,
     quite intelligent. He found a lifemate in Arabejila. She was the other half of his
     soul—light to his darkness. The courtship began and I . . .”
    Dax shook his head and turned his back completely to the rail, leaning against it
     to look directly into her eyes. “I looked away. I thought him safe. No Carpathian
     male with a lifemate would turn vampire, so as uneasy as I was, I quit watching him.”
    Riley allowed her lashes to sweep down, veiling her eyes for a moment so he wouldn’t
     see her sympathy. Dax was not a man to recognize shame or guilt, yet he felt it just
     as much as she did.
    “Arabejila’s father was my best friend. We hunted together. When others shunned me
     because of my strange talent, he didn’t. He told me my gift was useful, that I could
     keep our people safer than any other. We shared blood when we were injured. He knew
     his lifemate far before he ever would have lost emotion and color so he had nothing
     to fear from me, I know that, but still, he felt genuine affection for me as did his
     lifemate and Arabejila. They became my real ties to my people.”
    She could see flashes of images—his memories of a laughing woman who looked very much
     like her. A man and a woman, holding hands, turned toward one another, a look of utter
     love on their faces. Their